teen, the endless details and principles of that abounding and, in some respects, astonishing production, is what we do not assert, nor demand of others to believe. But the desire and resolution to read such a work, at such an age, bespeak capacity, and capacity ambitious of excellence. Nor could he have concluded the perusal of it, without finding the boundaries of his knowledge enlarged, and the faculties of his mind strengthened and improved.

A few weeks before the close of his college life, he was unexpectedly involved in a difficulty with the faculty, which resulted in his rustication. It was a small matter-the breaking of a table in the College halla piece of mischief which young Jay witnessed, but did not join his fellow-students in committing. The noise of the demolition reached the ears of the President, Dr. Cooper, who suddenly made his appearance among the surprised offenders, but not in time to discover them in the act. Upon interrogation, the young rogues, with the exception of Jay and one other, stoutly denied that they broke the table, or knew who did. Jay and his truth-telling comrade admitted that they knew the authors of the mischief, but refused to disclose their names. This natural and manly conduct, in the eyes of college magnates, was a high and grave offence. The professors were assembled, and the contumacious students summoned into their presence. Jay justly contended that there was nothing in the college statutes, which he had subscribed, requiring him to play the invidious part of an informer, and that his refusal to do so could not be construed into an act of disobedience. But college professors are not always the nicest judges of the fine strains of honor,' and this defence was deemed invalid. He and his companion were accordingly suspended. This undeserved punishment seems to have made as much impression upon Mr. Jay, as the ribald invective' of Weddeburn upon the mind of the philosophic Frank

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lin. His son mentions, that he retained among his papers, to the day of his death, a copy of the statutes, which he had so truly but ineffectually expounded. The sense of injustice, however, may be borne. No wound is inflicted upon the conscience, and no stain upon the character. He who suffers in the cause of truth, or justice, or honor, commands the respect of his fellows, and preserves his own. That youth who is so insensible to all honorable sentiments as to turn informer against his companions, merits universal contempt. He discovers a spirit of infinite baseness. He deliberately violates that implied faith, which is the bond of union, among the inmates of a public institution, and barters away his honor, and the confidence and esteem of his associates, generally with no higher motive than to secure the favor or friendship of the college officers. Base, dishonorable, or criminal conduct on the part of a student, absolves his comrades from the common bond, and, in such a case, they must be guided by the dictates of duty. It is not necessary to dwell upon extreme cases.

At the expiration of the sentence of rustication, Jay resumed his position at College. On the 15th day of May, 1764, he received his degree of Bachelor of Arts. He was appointed to speak the Latin Salutatory, an appointment from which he probably derived more pleasure than from all his subsequent honors.

CHAPTER III.

1764-1774.

HIS LEGAL STUDIES AND EARLY PRACTICE AT THE BAR.

WE have already seen that Jay, before the completion of his college course, had fixed his choice of a profession. But there was existing, at that time, a very unusual and peculiar obstacle to his study of the law in New York. The members of the bar, to prevent inroads upon their practice, had made an agreement not to receive into their offices, as clerks, any young men who intended to pursue the law as a profession. We should naturally suppose that a bar resorting to such a contrivance to secure the legal business of the province, must have been composed of the 'inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession.' Ability is generally conscious of its powers, fearless, ready for conflict, and invites, rather than avoids, a generous rivalry. Incapacity, on the contrary, is timid, illiberal, unmanly, and dreads competition. But I find among the lawyers of this period, high and eminent names-men who were an honor to their profession, and ornaments to the State. The sagacious and untiring Alexander, the father of Lord Stirling, had died but a few years before. The estimable and accomplished William Smith, the Historian of the Province, had been elevated to the post of Chief Justice but the previous year; while still at the bar were the irascible and impetuous, but honorable and sincere, William Livingston, the younger Smith, John Tabor Kempe the AttorneyGeneral, John Morin Scott, and Benjamin Kissam.

Prevented by the agreement which we have mentioned, from acquiring a legal education in his native province, Jay's father made preparations to send him to London as soon as he should leave college. But before the time arrived for his departure, the bar of New York, prompted by a consciousness of their unmanly conduct, or by the odium which it excited, abandoned their exclusive and invidious policy.

This obstruction being removed, Jay lost no time in sitting down to the study of his future profession. In two weeks after leaving college, we find him installed in the office of Benjamin Kissam, Esq., as a student at law. If Mr. Kissam was not the most learned nor the most brilliant member of his profession, he certainly was one of the best and most genial of men.

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He lived with his students on terms of free and familiar intercourse. While absent at Albany in the summer of 1766, attending an important capital trial, he wrote to Jay, requesting some account of the business. of the office.' The unfledged barrister replies in a style 'free enough in all conscience.' He returns a playful and ambiguous answer to the question addressed to him, and then proceeds, in rather a vague strain, to give him 'the news of the town.' 'Things remain here,' he says, if I may speak in your own language, pretty much in statu quo. Some, with reluctance, shuffling off this mortal coil; and others solacing themselves in the arms. of mortality. The ways of men, you know, are as circular as the orbit through which our planet moves, and the centre to which they gravitate is self: round this we move in mystic measures, dancing to every tune that is loudest played by heaven or hell. Some, indeed, that happen to be jostled out of place, may fly off in tangents, like wandering stars, and either lose themselves in a trackless void, or find another way to happiness; but, for the most part, we continue to frolic till we are

out of breath; then the music ceases, and we fall asleep. It is said you want more soldiers. I suspect Mr. Morris was lately inspired by some tutelar deity! If I remember right, he carried a great many flints with him. Good Lord deliver you from battle, murder, and from sudden death. Pray, how do all these insignia of war and bloodshed sit upon Sam. Jones' lay stomach? I wonder how he can bear to see Justice leaning on an officer's arm, without getting a fit of the spleen; or behold the forum surrounded with guards without suffering his indignation to trespass on his stoicism. I dare say he is not much pleased with such unusual pomp of justice, such unprecedented array of terror; and would rather see the court hop calmly along upon her own legs, than walk tolerably well with the assistance of such crutches. God bless him! I wish there were many such men among us; they would reduce things to just principles.'

Mr. Kissam at once replies to this facetious sally of his young friend, and in a tone that proves him to have been superior to that unamiable, professional pride which is too apt to be the distinguishing mark of a barren or uncultivated heart. I have just now received,' he says, 'your long letter of the 12th inst., and am not a little pleased with the humor and freedom of sentiment which characterise it. It would give me pain if I thought you could ever suspect me capable of wishing to impose any restraint upon you in this high and inestimable privilege of friendship. Because I can see no reason why the rights of one relation in life should destroy those of another, I detest that forbidding pride, which, with formal ceremony, can stalk over the social rights of others, and elevate the soul in a vain conceit of its own dignity and importance, founded merely in some adventitious circumstance of relative superiority. Take this, therefore, if you please, as a nolli prosequi for the heinous crime of writing a free and familiar letter to me; with VOL. I.—3